Yesterday I called my dad. I was exhausted. When he asked when I last slept, I found that I couldn’t even remember. I knew it was quite bad when I couldn’t do the math to figure it out, and it was only later that I pieced together that I hadn’t slept in over 35 hours. And nothing was going right. There were still bugs in the cli for my latest project, Blackbear, that I knew about but hadn’t addressed, so many features and ideas I was in the middle of working on. And on top of it all I felt like I had to make my Friday media post because that was my agreed upon accountability mechanism.
“Go to sleep. If you can’t do this without getting sleep, then you shouldn’t be doing it”
That was his advice, and I knew it to be excellent advice, but in the moment of hearing it I confess I was upset. I just felt like I had to keep pushing on these projects, and I felt like I could keep pushing on these projects, and fuck sleep and fuck anything that would get in my way. Even if nobody else understood, I’d build over it, around it, through it — whatever needed to get done to arrive at “completion”. That’s just how I felt. That was and is the depth of my determination when I set my mind to do something. (as a quick sidenote: I’ve spent my entire life telling people my Aries star sign is crazy because I’m really not that stubborn…)
“You aren’t going to make the choices you need to make without sleep. If you don’t take care of yourself, you can’t take care of the things you care about. And you can’t build anything if you’re dead.”
More sage advice, and again I could see the logic in it, but I was still frustrated. I wasn’t working so hard I’d die (I didn’t / don’t think). But the scope of the project was massive. The scope of my ambition and the vision for my projects, even greater. The speed at which companies like Anthropic and Cloudflare had been releasing incredible updates was giving me existential dread every second I wasn’t in motion as well. And then Cloudflare dropped 20% of their workforce and that dread crystallized. I saw the impact on LinkedIn with people I’ve known and worked with.
“You have to rest. And look, you aren’t going to beat these guys. The resources you’re trying to create for yourself, they already have them. The reach you’re trying to create for this project, they already have that too. You can’t beat them, you can only take the sawdust and sell the plywood”
Damn. There really wasn’t much for me to say in the face of that, and we sat in silence listening to the phone crackle for awhile. By all logic he is absolutely right. I’m only one person, I can’t compete with organizations of incredibly talented people, there’s just.. it’s just not well grounded. So I left my (literal) basement, and I went for a walk.
My own two hands. They’ve done a lot. In the past four months I’ve built some absolutely incredible shit. I can realize that and say it with a mix of pride and humility, humility because my efforts are built on the shoulders of giants. Over a million lines of code with the help of Xavi (the agentic harness that is my main project) and the immeasurable strength of open source communities. I’ve built so much in the past four months that I now spend 90% of my day in my own apps. But at the end of the day, as cool as that is, that doesn’t keep a roof over my head, and that doesn’t take care of my parents when they’re older. What should I do?
I walked around the city, people were happy, it was a beautiful day. It was another beautiful day I was missing in the basement, surrounded by machines and blue light and artificial air.
To be candid though, I don’t mind basements and blue light. I can put up with almost anything so long as I’m working on or doing what I care about. I’ve always been the sort of person who lives in their dreams. What was really upsetting was I had lost sight of what I wanted. What was I sacrificing for?
Was it for money? I could probably go into consulting and do quite well, but I don’t want to, so no. Was it for fame? Being famous sounds terrible, and I’d love to disappear if I get the opportunity, so no. Was it for recognition? Maybe a little bit, I do want the respect of my peers, I’m not not prideful. But still, nothing worth losing sleep over.
There was just.. no reason. I reached the end of my walk, Washington Square Park, and I had landed on something that maybe should have been obvious: that there was absolutely no reason I was killing myself for this effort. I had just gotten lost.
Lost in chasing an end goal and not enjoying a process, lost in existential dread over forces I can’t control. So I’m making a new choice. I’m going to get that sleep, and I’m going to enjoy my life while I can, and build when I’m able.
Does that mean my projects grow as fast? Perhaps they’ll grow faster with more rest, perhaps not, but at the end of the day.. who gives a fuck?? What will be, will be.
Thanks for reading — I’ll be back next week with the well-rested results